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Lancet Psychiatry Commissions bring together experts from across the world to synthesise existing knowledge on a pressing issue in mental health and build the way forward with recommendations that change health policy and improve practice.

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One such pressing issue is lived experience involvement in mental health* research. While it is increasingly common, a deep, applied understanding of the forms, principles, processes, challenges, and opportunities of lived experience in mental health research globally remains lacking. How can research truly integrate, honour, and reflect lived experience? How do we honour different, contextually responsive understandings of lived experience and mental health? How do we avoid tokenism and exploitation? How do we negotiate power? What cultural, structural, and systemic changes are needed locally and globally? How do we re-invent hierarchies of knowledge and re-imagine knowledge generation, authorship, and ownership? How does mental health support change as a result?

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Through values-driven processes led by lived experience, the Lancet Psychiatry Commission on Lived Experience in Mental Health Research will reflect on the history and evolution of lived experience involvement; assess existing knowledge and identify gaps; establish key principles; make space for differences and debates; and provide recommendations and next steps. In other words, the Commission will be a comprehensive publication on what we know about lived and living expertise, why and how to integrate it in mental health research, and where we should

go next. 

 

We hope that the Commission will: